Captioning Non-Spoken or Visual Content, or Onscreen Text

CaptionSync produces verbatim transcripts and captions of the spoken audio in the media files submitted to us -- our transcribers listen to the audio content, transcribe it, and our system then generates the captions. But if the media contains non-spoken content such as music, onscreen text or visual features that should also be captioned, there are several options available.

We supply the Transcript:

Our transcribers are trained to reject requests where the audio contains little or no spoken audio content, like music. So if you want to caption such media files, you'll need to communicate this to the transcriber by adding a Persistent Note to your account, or using the Guidance for Transcriber feature at submission time. E.g.:

Please do not reject content that is mostly or completely music. Use a parenthetical comment to note it, e.g., [ Music ].

The transcriber will then include the necessary parenthetical comments in the transcript, to note the non-spoken content. For information on transcribing and captioning songs, please read our Can I have lyrics in my captions and/or transcript? article.Note that our transcribers will typically not transcribe visual features or onscreen text.

Example 1: The first 6 minutes of the media have no audio content. The transcript will reflect this as:

[ Silence ]^M00:06:00Text

Example 2: The media file contains music at some point. The transcript will reflect this as:

Text^M00:12:25[ Music ]^M00:15:47Text

You supply the Transcript (or want to edit the existing one):

If you are uploading your own transcript, or your submission has been successfully captioned but you want to capture non-spoken content, you can edit the existing transcript and include the non-spoken content, as long as it is properly formatted. More information about the usage of comments and sync markers is available in our Sync Marker Summary article. If we supplied the transcript, you need to edit the marked transcript available by Text Transcript, in the Submission Details page of your request. If Result Review was performed on your request, or your Transcription-Captioning request failed originally, you need to edit the new transcript our reviewer issued, available by Text Transcript, on the new Submission Details page (the Description starts with Redo:).

Example 1: There is onscreen text in your video you want to see captioned. You should format the transcript like:

Example 2: There is some visual content in your video you want to see captioned. You should format the transcript like:

Text^M00:03:54[ Child looks at car ]^M00:04:00[ The car speeds away ]^M00:04:05[ The child returns to a house ]^M00:04:12[ The child plays ]^M00:04:52Text

Example 3: There are pictures in your video with information you want to see captioned. You should format the transcript like:

[ Sponsored by: The Institute of Arts ]^M00:00:05[ at the University of Bela Vista ]^M00:00:08[ The Center for Community Partnerships ]^M00:00:11[ The Center for Technical Partnerships ]^M00:00:14[ The Social Enterprise Institute ]^M00:00:17Text

Additional Notes:

We do not take timecodes from the media file (burned into the picture). If you need an Offset value, you need to set it under the Advanced Settings, before making the request.

If you are editing a transcript for an existing submission, you can then use the Redo feature to generate new results.